The images I have are all in .JPG format, at a resolution of 1280x800, and I'm looking for a program that can put these images into a timelapse movie in some kind of lossless format (raw/uncompressed AVI would be fine) for further editing. Does anyone have any ideas, or has anyone tried anything like this with a similar number of pictures?

mencoder outputs avi, regardless of output filename. There are options to output other formats, but the code doesn't work well. The recommended way is to output h.264-in-avi, then remux. Just use ffmpeg instead. (see Shenal Silva's answer)
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Peter CordesJan 15 at 5:08

I'm busy with a video to journal me building a surfboard using these tools. A work in progress have been posted on my profile to YouTube (search for "Surfbordbou" - I'm not allowed more than 2 links per post yet)

Picasa's movie maker is really easy to use, it's 2 clicks and you've got your timelapse of a set of selected pictures.

Welcome to the site. When you say you're getting good results, is that doing the same kind of task and working with a quantity of images on the order of magnitude as in the question? That's a key point and you should discuss it in your answer. If the answer is yes, describe it and you have a winning answer. If it's not, it's useful information but not a great answer to this question. In that case, delete this answer, ask a new question about doing your task, and then answer your own question with your solution. That would be another winning combination.
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fixer1234Nov 3 '14 at 4:52

​We tested our Time-Lapse Tool software to generate video from 100k images and it works like a charm. All these images can be added from multiple folders which is helpful for photos from DSLR grouped by 10k images in folder.​

All you have to do is download it, and run the executable inside the downloaded folder (no installer).

Then to add the pictures, you just push the "Add Files" button in the top right corner and select the pictures you want to compile.

Once they have been imported, you can use the "Up" and the "Down", on the middle left side, to adjust the ordering of the pictures in case they didn't stay in order.

Then to adjust the frame rate of the compiled pictures, you can change the text box inside the "Playback frame rate" frame, lower right side, to the frame rate you want.

Since the program is still in beta (0.1.1), some things don't work. Push the "Begin" button and specify the file name you want. When it asks what type of compression you want, select the one you want, except for the "Full Frames(Uncompressed)" which didn't work for me.

Then once it's done compiling the video, go and watch to video and see how it is. If the video is blank(no length), try changing the Compression options. (That's what happened when I tried "Full Frames(Uncompressed)")

I couldn't get any of the other methods listed here to work, and this one worked for me! Hope it works for you! :)

Just a note of warning: do not think you can bypass ffmpeg's printf syntax and just use *.jpg or something for more complex patterns. It will actually overwrite each and every one of your image files with the first one! I tried it myself.
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ChristianJan 2 '13 at 16:34

I was stuggeling with this as well. I turns out you can do this but need to set the glob style flag. ffmpeg -pattern_type glob -i 'time-lapse-files/*.JPG' time-lapse.mp4
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arno_vDec 31 '13 at 12:25

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You can use -framerate for the image2 input format. I would recommend against setting an output fps different from input fps, unless you actually want ffmpeg to drop or duplicate frames. (unless outputting to a container like mkv where ffmpeg supports variable frame rate.) Yeah, just tested, and you do get extra dup frames fed through x264, so just set the FPS of the input, but putting -r or -framerate BEFORE -i .../stuff
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Peter CordesJan 15 at 5:04

5) You can Load an Audio Track, change the dimensions (I normally use 1024x768), add slides with text ini the Slide Tab...

6) Video Maker > Video Tab > Create Video. You can sign in with you google account and upload it to youtube from here too.

Back in the library, you can right click the video > locate in disk to see where the video was saved. Another good thing about using Picasa is that you can select all the pictures and go to the top menu Picture > Batch Edit > I'm Feeling Lucky. It will correct the contrast and colour of all the photos at the same time.

Just for fun, here's another way (no, I'm clearly NOT trying to refine my own process.) It turns out nothing on Windows wants to edit the output mencoder produces from my other answer. This is a more edit-friendly version using ffmpeg:

I faced a similar problem a while ago when I tried making a timelapse for a create-a-thon at a local hackerspace. I run OS X, so I'm not sure how viable it is to use this on Windows, but I used MEncoder.

I'd also vote for Virtualdub(have done actually this operation, can't remember if were these many). Is also easy later on to remove frames you don't want, etc.
Maybe you could try using a lossless video format to render and store it, like camstudio codec. For a timelapse...maybe is also ok techsmith codec (TSCC), but that works only if you have purchased (or obtained an old version from a magazine) Camtasia, as it installs the encoding version of the codec. It makes really small videos. And probably is apropiate for a time lapse.

I had to do something like that before. I was successfully able to do it in quicktime pro by doing it 500 frames at a time. I would save those as an individual movie and then move on to the next. Then later I would combine all of the 500 frame segments into the final thing.

If we multiply that up by 30,000 frames you need 117187.5 MB (114.45 GB) of memory to hold the whole movie in memory in one go - no wonder QuickTime Pro is failing.

You could try reducing the resolution but that might still fail.

You will need to build the movie up in smaller chunks and then stitch the whole thing together. I would expect that there are applications that do this without loading the entire movie into memory. The final movie will also have to be compressed - again as it would occupy 114 GB on the hard drive. A movie only occupies a single DVD after all while your movie is 20 minutes long (at 25 frames per second).

@ddrachenstern and @ChrisF - there is a difference between immediate storage and long-term storage. There is no video editing program that stores the entire length of the uncompressed video data in memory. Even when you scroll through the preview, it will recreate the data from what it has stored on the hard disk from the various media sources (and maybe a bit more for caching). Other then that, when you finally "render" a project, then you get the full video output (usually as a stream). The full video output can then be saved as-is (e.g. uncompressed/RAW), or streamed to an encoder.
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BreakthroughFeb 22 '11 at 21:56

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Sorry, when I made my first comment, I just wanted to point out that the problem is not a lack of memory. I also meant that while a program may store some uncompressed video data in memory (e.g. for previewing), it never stores the entire video stream (again, due to the issues you brought to light in your answer). This is just the way these programs are made, so this shouldn't be an issue. Sorry for any misinterpretations!
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BreakthroughFeb 22 '11 at 22:01

I had a typo. I allready tried Photolapse, but it fails in the rendering process. If I lower to 10.000 images, it completes the AVI file - but the file is useless, and cannot be played.
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SwiftFeb 23 '11 at 22:06

@Swift I understand you need the files to be at their original size. I've always batch downsampled images using Irfanview prior to creating the timelapse avi. Hopefully you find the solution you need!
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JYeltonFeb 23 '11 at 22:14